Buffett discussed a variety of topics during an interview on CNBC on Monday after he spent Saturday answering questions before thousands of Berkshire Hathaway shareholders.

The chairman and chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway said he did not think the stock market was overpriced compared with other options, even though he had trouble finding entire businesses to buy at reasonable prices.

“It wouldn’t take me a nanosecond to decide to go into stocks,” he said.

Buffett said cryptocurrencies like bitcoin were non-productive assets similar to gold. He said anyone buying bitcoin was betting that someone else would pay more for it later.

Berkshire vice-chairman Charlie Munger said buying bitcoin with the hope that someone else would outbid you later was bad business.

“I think it’s a scumbag activity,” Munger said.

Buffett reiterated his standard advice that buying an index fund, such as the S&P 500 fund, regularly over time was the best option for most people.

He said the reports he gets from Berkshire’s more than 90 businesses tell him that the US economy remains strong and has been improving lately.

Buffett said most of Berkshire’s businesses were hiring, and several of them were having trouble finding workers. For instance, carpet installers and certain construction workers were especially hard to find.

Camera IconBerkshire Hathaway chairman and CEO Warren Buffett laughs during an interview on Fox Business Network’s Countdown to the Closing Bell.

He believed Wells Fargo was cleaning up its operation after being mired in scandals for more than a year. Berkshire owns 10 per cent of the bank’s shares.

Buffett said Wells Fargo clearly had the wrong incentives in place and didn’t act quickly enough when bank employees opened as many as 2 million accounts without getting customers’ permission to meet aggressive sales targets.

But Buffett defended Wells Fargo as an investment.

“Some of our greatest opportunities came from similar situations,” he said.

Two long-term Berkshire investments in American Express and Geico came after scandals at those companies.

Roughly 40,000 people attended Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting on Saturday. Many of them are still wondering what Buffett might do with the more than $US100 billion ($133 billion) in cash that Berkshire is holding.

Buffett said he would eventually put that cash to work either in more acquisitions or other investments. Already this year Berkshire has bought 75 million additional Apple shares to give it more than 240 million shares.

He said on Monday that he liked the economics of the iPhone maker’s business, and the company’s management.

Buffett said he decided to invest in Apple after he realised that consumers were unlikely to switch to another product once they became established with Apple’s system.

“I don’t even understand technology,” said Buffett, who still uses a flip phone. “It’s a consumer good.”

Berkshire Hathaway owns more than 90 companies, including railway, clothing, furniture and jewellery firms. Its insurance and utility businesses typically account for more than half of the company’s net income.

The company also has major investments in such companies as American Express, IBM and Wells Fargo & Co.